On Straw Dogs, the craft and more
Gary Tunnicliffe is one of the best special effects makeup artists working in Hollywood today. His laundry list of impressive credits includes Scream 4, Drive Angry 3D, My Bloody Valentine 3D, The Collector, Feast, Exorcist: The Beginning, Blade<, and several Hellraiser, Halloween, and Dracula movies.
In addition to a plethora of horror movies, Tunnicliffe has also worked on several major Hollywood productions like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Mission: Impossible II.
Last Friday saw the release of Rod Lurie’s Straw Dogs remake. Tunnicliffe served as the movieâs Makeup Effects Supervisor (and also worked on Apollo 18). Renowned film critic Roger Ebert praised the makeup effects while discussing the onscreen bloodshed, saying “so much movie violence these days is CGI and not very realistic, and this all looks like real bodies causing great pain to each other.”
Tunnicliffe, who recently finished working on November’s Piranha 3DD, took time to answer some questions about the differences between horror and non-horror projects, practical versus CG effects, his long and diverse career, and more.
Shock Till You Drop: Roger Ebert indirectly praised your work on the Straw Dogs remake by noting how real it looks when someone inflicts bodily harm upon someone else. Do you feel like your work on movies like Straw Dogs is overlooked at the expense of your work on more straightforward horror movies? Or is that something you’re used to by now?
Gary Tunnicliffe: No, I don’t feel it’s overlooked. A makeup effect is a part of movie and a movie should probably be the sum of its parts. In my opinion great movies are usually just that, a rare ‘collision’ of a great script, great performances, direction, production design, wardrobe, props, makeup, editing etc. A good script acted poorly or with an actor in garish makeup handling a plastic prop can ruin everything. With Straw Dogs it wasn’t about the effect. I suspect it was more about the intention and therefore probably edited very tightly without the lingering (blood lust) shots that you might find in more standard horror fare and sometimes (ironically) it tends to: a) make the effect look better and b) illicit a stronger reaction.
Shock: On a project like Straw Dogs, is your approach different than it is for something like Piranha 3DD? Is there more of an effort to craft makeup effects that appear more “real”?
Tunnicliffe: Personally my approach is always to create realism, even if it is ‘cinematic realism’ (I’ll explain that in a moment). Sometimes, however, you’re dealing with something that an audience simply can’t relate to on a ‘realistic’ level and so that impedes the realism. For example, we’ve all seen cuts and bruises, even deep lacerations. We have a visual point of reference. Very few people have seen someone decapitated by a sword or eaten by a killer shark and so when they see it depicted in a movie, no matter how good it looks it draws a critical eye, the very nature of what you’re seeing pulls you ‘out of the movie’ and makes you question what youâre seeing. Obviously if it’s a plastic looking head in a bad wig you’re pulled out even more. But a super realistic head has (oddly enough) the same effect: ‘Wow thatâs a nice looking head!’ You’re thinking not ‘Oh my god, that guy just got his head cut off!’
The brief on Straw Dogs was ‘reality.’ Rod Lurie wanted to steer away from anything too fantastical – early on I did designs for very elaborate burn make up on a character in the film but these were nixed in favor of something more realistic and it was a wise choice.
All of the effects we did were small, intimate almost and those generally tend to have the strongest effect. Watch a cinema audience witness a decapitation and there’s one kind of response. Watch the same audience witness someone stub their toe and tear off a toenail and the whole place erupts, because you’re dealing with something they can connect to.
Piranha 3DD was a much bolder, in-your-face production and so the gags and effects are a reflection of just that.
*Cinematic Realism 101
If we were to create fake bodies, corpses and viscera to look anatomically correct it simply would look fake. Real bodies devoid of blood have a translucent waxy appearance, bullet holes are simply black dots etc. We have to endeavor to create something that looks ‘real’ in a way that we think it ‘would look’ without being fake – therein lies the dilemma sometimes!
Shock: As a practical effects specialist, do you work much with CG or have any input when CGI is used to enhance makeup effects? Has CG changed anything about the way you work?
Tunnicliffe: I work a great deal with CGI and in some cases have a huge amount of input. I have even supervised CG shots. I think first and foremost we have to realize that CG is here to stay and itâs only getting better and cheaper. I often use the analogy that CG (and makeup fx in some ways) is rather like hair transplant work: if it’s done well you have no idea, done poorly and oops!
What is key is that effects people (CG, makeup and practical) try to work together, without bias, to serve the effect as best as possible. Each discipline does things exceptionally well, and each practitioner should try to know the othersâ strong points, respect them and then utilize them all to create the best effect that the budget, time frame and nature of the project allow.
In terms of imagining the diversity of my career, first of all I doubt I ever dared to dream that I would actually ‘have a career,â but had I done so, I doubt I would have imagined directing the likes of Dakota Fanning, Chloe Grace Moretz, Taylor Momsen, Howie Mandel, Christopher Lloyd and James Earl Jones, etc. in two G-rated family films, that’s for sure.
In regards to special makeup effects, which is still very much my ‘bread and butter,’ I have been extremely fortunate to be able to come over to the USA and work in a place I love, with amazing people, and even after 20 years doing this, that fact alone ‘excites me.’
In terms of work…a great script excites me, an enthusiastic, creative, considerate and responsive director excites me, great actors excite me, strong, respectful producers excite me, the reaction of an audience excites me, and just the very nature of the industry excites me.
And of course pulling off a great kill, well-executed prosthetic or makeup effect excites me. Sitting with that cinema audience for those two hours in the dark and hearing them and feeling them react to something that you and your team created is like nothing else.
What doesn’t excite me and what hurts me is the fact that the internet has become a ‘blunt force trauma tool.â We hear about ‘cyber bullying’ in schools and the cause and effect of it and everyone seems to just assume that if you are an actor, director, makeup effects guy or whomever, that if you make something for ‘public consumption,’ then you automatically sign away the right to ‘open attack.’ People would be amazed and appalled if they knew the amount of industry people (on all levels) who, sometimes on a daily basis, are deeply hurt and offended not by constructive criticism (which we all take as part of the process) but by the simply nasty, sometimes deeply personal, venomous ‘one liners’ from anyone who has an email account. I have seen A-list actors bought to almost tears by the kind of visceral diatribe you wouldnât expect on a prison yard for simply being paid to act in a movie…and it’s simply wrong and sad.
To learn more about Tunnicliffe and his vast body of work, visit TwoHoursintheDark.net.
Source: Paul Doro
